What Aretha Franklin Taught Me About Being Unapologetically Fabulous

When I was a little girl—way before I became a teenager and refused to wake up early—I used to watch my mom, a criminal prosecutor in Chicago, get ready for her day at the office. I’d sit outside of her closet and watch her pick out one of her brightly colored, gold-buttoned St. John suits from a spectrum of options. She’d pile on chain-link bracelets and beaded necklaces, always topping off the look with her giant crimson-framed eyeglasses. (Red was her color.) If she’d had a particularly bad go of it the day prior—whether it was being mansplained to by her mostly male colleagues or getting in a tiff with my dad—she’d play Aretha Franklin while she dressed. “Respect” was her song. “Aretha,” as my mom always lovingly referred to her, was like our faraway fairy godmother whose diva power presided over our house when the male energy was coming in too hot. The singer’s voice could lift my mom’s spirits immediately, and her attitude and swag gave her the strength to suit up and charge into another day.

Sitting on the floor near my mom’s vanity, I learned what it meant to embrace one’s own aura of fabulousness. I watched Aretha’s “Think” scene in The Blues Brothers a hundred times, putting my hand on my hip and pointing my finger in the air, saying to no one out loud, “You better think about what you’re sayin’! You better think about the consequences of your actions!” I watched Aretha perform on TV with my mom, and we’d marvel at her lavish furs, beaded gowns, and extravagant daytime handbags that, I later learned, she carried with her always—onstage, on the red carpet—for fear of someone stealing her wallet.

Aside from my mom, I’d never seen a woman who wore color and gold embellishment so well. I’d see photos of Aretha in my mom’s magazines and studied every sculptural hat and fascinator and tried to count the millions of strings of crystals on her dresses. I was just learning what fashion was and had something of a split sartorial personality, coveting head-to-toe lime-green skirt and patent leather shoe combinations while living day to day in my mesh basketball shorts and oversize T-shirts. I dreamed of a wardrobe like my mom’s, like Aretha’s, but I hadn’t yet found the confidence to wear it. Sequins and feathers were still far out of my wheelhouse.

Then I grew up. I still watched that Blues Brothers scene over and over, now on YouTube, and I watched Aretha perform onstage, singing “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” in a mink coat at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors and “My Country ’Tis of Thee” at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. It should be noted that even when the Smithsonian begged Aretha for the hat she wore on that momentous occasion, she refused to give it up, saying that it “would be hard to part with my chapeau since it was such a crowning moment in history.” She was never a woman you wanted to mess with—especially when it came to her clothes and accessories.

Today, in light of the fact that Aretha has passed on, I’m fondly thinking of her uncompromising style—and remembering what a profound effect it had on both me and the most important woman in my life, my mom. I’m 31 now, and still trying to be a little bit like Aretha by embracing a more vivacious way of dressing, whether it’s piling on prints or wearing bigger pieces of statement jewelry. They say you are supposed to do one thing every day that scares you, and maybe this should apply to our wardrobes, too. My mom was never afraid to be herself and wear a bright red knit suit into a boardroom full of men, even after getting knocked down the day before. Aretha was never afraid to stand onstage in fur and feathers and diamonds and tell women everywhere to get the respect that they deserve. She was bold through and through. Listening to her and watching her with my mom throughout the years—having been lucky enough to be touched by a faraway fairy godmother of soul—I’ve learned how to embrace being fearless.

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